I’ve been trying to read Kuntsler’s The Long Emergency and am just having trouble getting into it. The problem is that while the advice given about sustainable communities, failed systems, etc, etc, is good, I have trouble getting into the notion that ‘Peak Oil’ will be the downfall of civilization.
Does anyone even remember Peak Oil? Is it getting relegated to the ‘dustbin of history’ along with The New Ice Age, Y2K, Bird Flu, and EMP?
What brings this up for me is that the local banking institution I do business at has no access to their tellers…instead, you get this:
You stand at a video kiosk and work your transaction with a vacuum tube system (very steampunk…it’s like 1930’s Wall Street). I asked one of the employees about the reasoning for completely locking the tellers out..was it security? Staffing issues? Nope. The story I was told is that the building was constructed recently when then Bird Flu specter was all the rage. The idea was to prevent exposure to infected people. A fascinating idea except that currency .. cash.. is probably the most effective disease-spreading vector in the public marketplace. The dollar bill in your pocket has been in a strippers g-string, a homeless guys urine-soaked pocket, a hospital janitors wallet, etc, etc, and all through it’s travels it’s picked up enough bugs to wipe out a reclusive Amazon village.
So..keeping your tellers in a sneeze-proof room is more effective in preventing the spread of illness than, I dunno, running all the Andrew Jacksons under a UV light and through an autoclave?
But it reminded me of the failed prophecies that have come down the pike lately…Y2K, Peak Oil, 2012, etc, etc. While there is just no real predicting when the wheels are going to fly off civilization, you can’t go wrong being ready for it. BUT….hinging all your plans on that event, at a particular time and place, is just the sort of thing that gets you a tinfoil Stetson.
This is actually one of the first times I’ve ever seen a private commercial enterprise build their facility specifically to ward against a particular Bad Event. Interesting.
Betcha the insurance premium is lower if a teller can’t be robbed.
I worked in a facility built to guard against a particular Bad Thing; two-inch thick plexiglass windows and man traps, etc. We made credit cards. It’s a wonder I lasted as long as I did considering I maintained we were doing Satan’s work 🙂
A slight tangent: MythBusters looked at various supposedly germy surfaces. IIRC, money would be the runner-up as a cause of human extinction. The kitchen sponge will be the end of us if the microbes mutate. (Hyperbole for dramatic effect.)
I agree with not being able to get into that book! For me as well it is the continued lie of a Peak Oil Narrative.
We in Colorado alone have 1 trillion barrels of Grade A Crude under Denver- not to mention all the other Shale Formations in Colorado, Utah, Montana, Wyoming, North and South Dakota. The idea of Peak Oil was the biggest farce of all time, outside of Global Warming and Democrats are good for the economy.
Between Oil, Nat Gas, and Coal- We should never have to worry about energy again.
Hopefully, when Nano-Tech makes Solar efficient, we will move in that direction- But until then- Clean coal and Refining is the most important Energy we have, and it will never run out.
Peak Oil already happened. Adjusted for delivered BTU, global daily barrels go from the reported 85 million to just 70. Lack of growth in production is behind our economic contraction.
Peak oil is a real concern, but the timing of it is where the peak oil prophets screwed up, insisting the end is near. Could be an issue in the next decade or two or three… I could easily be senile or dead before the problem emerges. Population growth without energy growth equals reduced standard of living, but not necessarily the stuff of a Chuck Heston movie.
While the author has some good points, they seem overshadowed by the fact that this book is a BEAST to get through. But yeah, it’s really hard to see what he is saying about peak oil, especially with what is going on in the Bakken.
i wonder if its more geared toward the greek debacle and keeping depositors from pummeling the tellers.
Lol, probably some truth to that one. Remaking that Robert De Niro ‘GOODFELLAS’ movie scene (Gimme my money !!! :^). Plus much easier for a TV screen to read ‘Insufficient Funds – Try Later’ then a teller.
In the midst of The Long Emergency myself and is a bit tedious. Great post as always though, thanks.
Unless you think the earth has an unlimited supply of oil in it’s mantle, you believe in peak oil. Peak oil just notes that as oil fields get past their half-full point the oil gets sludgier and well pressures fall making it harder and more expensive to get out. The sludgier oil also take more energy to refine so your Energy Returned On Energy Invested goes down.
The question is, what will the outcome of a falling EROEI be? So far it looks like the armageddon-ish claims don’t workout, as they usually don’t.
I don’t prep, or whatever, because I think the end of the world is coming. I do this because I see the world entering a era of rapid change and rapid change is destabilizing. Weird and sometimes bad shit happens in a destabilized and rapidly changing world. I see all sorts of good changes happening in the world right now, actually. But, I realize that change, be it good or bad, is destabilizing and that what I see as good others might see as bad and they just might get freaked out and angry enough to start throwing petrol bombs and shooting people & Etc.
Commander, the book sucked, The End.
I dunno, I liked The Long Emergency. It’s getting a bit dated, now (came out in 2006) but that’s the point of the title — that we won’t fall off a cliff, but suffer a long, intermittent slide. He even predicts oil price swings like the current low, as merely a sign of market instability. Does anybody here think the price of oil is never going back up again? It’s just down now because the Saudis are flooding the market, trying to make American natural gas unprofitable.
He makes the point that Peak Oil doesn’t mean we run out of oil. It means the remaining oil is simply too expensive to get out of the ground. The point that stuck with me was, when a dollar’s worth of oil costs more than a dollar to extract, it’s over.
On a side note, I’m a regular reader of Kunstler’s online column, and while he’s usually just repeating the same mantra, this week’s piece is one of his best, recounting a recent run-in with some campus PC police.
http://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/good-little-maoists/#more-5922‘
I never read The Long Emergency, although I am a fan of Kunstler’s World Made by Hand series.
My first EOTWAWKI book was Howard Ruff’s “How to Prosper During the Coming Bad Years.” I quickly realized that his time-line wasn’t accurate, but still, much of his advice was right on. Don’t know if any of the things I read about will come to pass in my lifetime, but I still prep, because I have experienced a couple of very personal EOTWAWKI events.